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The theory - evolution is a theory, quantum mechanics, relativity, etc. - please let them tell the story, some of it difficult to understand or believe. However, we have come to believe. They come to us and believe in fundamentally different ways of our ancestors from the picture is himself, the world, and where we please.             The Growing Influence of Science       We think that science is special: its products — technological spin-offs — dominate our lives. Sometimes it enriches our lives; sometimes it impoverishes them or even takes them away. For better or worse, no institution has had more impact on the character of our existence this millennium than science. Penicillin, computers, atomic bombs make modern life modern life.   Science affects our lives profoundly in another way as well. These technological devices derive from sophisticated theories, some rudimentary understanding of which is the hallmark of the educated person. The theories — evolution, quantum mechanics, relativity, and so forth — tell us stories that are sometimes hard to believe them or even to understand. But we do come to believe them. And in coming to believe them we form radically different pictures from our ancestors of ourselves, of the world, and of our place in it. The modern person is composed ultimately of subatomic particles with properties that defy comprehension. We trace our origins back to inanimate matter and live in a curved space-time created by a big bang. Nowhere is this hunger to know the scientific picture of the world more manifested than in the remarkable current demand for popular science writings. Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time (1988), on the list of best-selling books for well over a year, is but one of many attempts to paint the scientific world picture for the layperson.   We are so impressed with science that we give quite amazing credibility to any claim that is successfully represented as being scientific. A mundane example was provided by the Ben Johnson fiasco. Some years ago the entire Canadian population was convulsed with delight the night on which Johnson appeared to have won the Olympic gold medal in the 100-meter sprint. The Prime Minister declared him to be a model for youth and a symbol around which to build the Canadian identity. At a press conference the next day it was revealed that a scientific test which was probably understood by only a handful of Canadians had shown on the basis of data available to only a couple of scientists that Johnson had been taking steroids. Notwithstanding the nation's desire to believe the contrary, within hours almost all of the 23,000,000 Canadians had changed their minds and concluded that Johnson had cheated: such is the power of science. No other institution in Western pluralistic societies has had such power to engender belief except possibly organized religion and the Communist Party. The Communist Party is finished. And while the influence of religion diminishes as educational levels go up, that of science increases.          — W.H. Newton-Smith, Blackwell's A Companion to the Philosophy of Science               Indexes/02